Revolution No. E9: Cole Foster's BMW 2800CS

3 of 9Aside from a bit of restifcation, the interior is largely stock.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

4 of 9Wheels were sourced from a 5th-generation 540i

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

5 of 9Foster's creation might be the perfect Central Coast cruiser

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

6 of 9Brushed twin kidneys are not courtesy of Wolfgang Puck

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

7 of 9High greenhouse, low ground clearance

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

8 of 9Note the flush-mount turn signals

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

9 of 9Yes, that bumper is actually steel

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

Our first 20 years affect us in ways that don't always manifest themselves until later in life. Renowned custom-car and motorcycle builder Cole Foster grew up in 1970s Los Angeles surrounded by Top Fuel royalty. Years ago, raconteur Mike LaVella (who later ended up authoring a book with Foster) asked Cole about his childhood: “So, you had the Snake and Mongoose toys then?”

When his father, dragster builder and Top Fuel driver Pat Foster, abruptly pulled up stakes and moved the family to the Monterey Peninsula, the teenage Cole said he felt as if he'd landed on some verdant variant of Mars. No more punk-rock shows at Hollywood's infamous Starwood, no more riding dirt bikes down the bed of the dry L.A. River. He was suddenly plunked down in the insular realm of Monterey townies, a place where everybody was into sports cars. Being an ingenious sort, Cole adapted, building himself BMW 2002s.

He proceeded to screw around in relative obscurity for 20 years, until a Ford F-100 custom he built garnered the Chip Foose Design Excellence Award at the 2001 Grand National Roadster Show. Later that year, the doors burst wide open when Cole's shop, Salinas Boys Customs, unveiled what's become known as the “Blue Bike.” A decade on, the hardtail V-twin-powered exercise in tightly packaged minimalism doesn't seem particularly radical, but that's only because of the raft of bobbers that have followed in its wake. If that single motorcycle didn't knock the wind from the sails of the overwrought-chopper trend overnight, it certainly signaled that a change was afoot.

Then Metallica's Kirk Hammett tasked him to build what's undoubtedly one of the most significant hot rods of the 2000s, a 1936 Ford that looks as if Edsel himself commissioned Figoni et Falaschi to do the coachwork.

Once the '36 was complete, Foster decided he was done with cars for a while. He turned his efforts back to bikes, finding the more bite-sized projects suitable for the small operation behind his Salinas house.

About a year ago, that changed. Susan, Cole's wife, said to me, “Cole's gone BMW crazy!” He'd never lost the bug entirely; he kept a ratty old 733 around as a daily driver even as every project in the shop seemed to feature a V-twin or a V8. He picked up a 3.0 CS with the idea of making something out of it. But, as with many a project-on-a-whim car, that first CS turned out to be a mess once he started digging into it. A friend pointed him in the direction of another car--a 1971 2800CS owned by an old lady who hadn't driven it in more than a decade.

With two examples of one of the finest shapes ever to roll out of the Bayerische Motoren Werke at hand, Foster set to work.

Meanwhile, he'd taken to posting pictures of outlaw-style Porsche 356s on his Facebook page, a staple of the California sports-car scene since the days when the rear-engined lightweights were affordable hobbyist cars. Hated by purists, the outlaw cars, when done right, featured a wicked stance and a dangerous vibe at odds with the friendly, pootling-along-the-coast demeanor many associate with Ferry Porsche's first mass-market car. Then Foster announced that he was going to build an outlaw CS.

While much has been done to all manner of later BMW models, the conventional wisdom among E9 enthusiasts is that there are two ways to build one. The first is to completely restore it to concours standards. The second is to turn it into a Batmobile, a replica of the aero-aid festooned 3.0 CSL racers that dominated the European Touring Car Championship in the late 1970s and made an impression on our shores running in the IMSA GT Championship. That's it. Finito. Your two options. Step outside of the strictures and you're a blasphemer, a heretic and undoubtedly, a dud.

Part of the reason for the prejudice is simply that, given the car's fundamental design, they're the easiest ways to go without massive headaches. Having learned to live with migraines, Foster re-engineered the car. Tucking the E39 540i wheels under the earlier coupe's fenders necessitated moving both the front and rear suspension farther inboard.

To get the geometry right, Foster spent time in the junkyard studying modern front-suspension engineering and then cut, welded and reinforced until he had something he was fairly confident would work. And work it does; the car tracks straight, rides nicely and corners without drama.

Other than the suspension work, it's not as if the car's been radically reconfigured, but the little differences add up to a look that takes the CS in an entirely different direction. Touches such as the hand-fabbed aluminum pan that replaces the front bumper and the larger BMW roundel on the nose signal that something's going on here without calling attention to themselves as modifications. Foster crafted the rear bumper from a unit originally fitted to the E9's predecessor, the 2000CS. The brushed-aluminum look was achieved by having aluminum sprayed onto the steel piece by California Metal Spraying in Santa Rosa, Calif., then carefully sanding it down. Foster crafted the all-red tail-lamp lenses himself. The interior remains largely stock, as does the engine bay. Minor tweaks were made for convenience and cleanliness, such as replacing the old underhood insulation with neoprene foam.

While the 2.8-liter engine still breathes through the old Solex carburetors, there is a concession to modernity: the paint laid down by Lionel Duran of Spectrum Auto Collision in Salinas. It's a current BMW color called Marrakech Brown--one of the finer hues available from any OEM today--and it pairs perfectly with the Wilhelm Hofmeister design's '70s lines.

“When I had my 2002s, this was like the big boss car,” Foster said of the coupe. “I couldn't afford one then.” Now that he's built an example with his own inimitable touches, the phalanx of cookie-cutter E9 fans might just find themselves rethinking how a CS should look. This car, then, is the big boss that shall lead them.